Is "Baller" Trademarked Yet?

This post is a part of WNBA Week+.  During this stretch, I will release several blog posts related to the WNBA, including news stories, player discussions, and teams’ seasons.   If you have read my previous WNBA posts, you probably know that I love the Connecticut Sun.   While I started paying attention to the WNBA a little bit when I was in grad school in 2017 (I turned on Game 2 of the WNBA Finals while flipping through channels and was blown away by how exciting the game was).   Unfortunately, I found it a little tough to watch a bunch of the games for the next couple years, which was pretty sad given how much fun the games were.   I didn’t really become a huge fan of the sport until 2020 when I watched some of the games in The Bubble and was hooked.   It was natural for me to root for my home state team, which was Connecticut, so I was spoiled in not watching the team for their suffering leading up to their playoff runs from 2017-2024 and their 6 st...

This post is a part of WNBA Week+.  During this stretch, I will release several blog posts related to the WNBA, including news stories, player discussions, and teams’ seasons.   While sports teams obviously care about talent, there is naturally a focus on how players fit with each other.   Teams across sports teams will naturally focus on both fit with playing style and chemistry both on and off the court.   This is something that occurs across sports no matter the strategy; for instance, a baseball team usually won’t have their 3 best players all be catchers, a soccer team want at least a couple players who can be strikers or offensive oriented (ironically, there was one year the USMNT had only one striker in the World Cup, and that player got injured in the first game), and a hockey team with an elite goalie won’t get another star goalie.   The same goes for basketball, as many teams will be nervous about playing multiple non-shooters on the court at the s...

This post is a part of WNBA Week+.  During this stretch, I will release several blog posts related to the WNBA, including news stories, player discussions, and teams’ seasons.   If you’ve been following my releases on either blog or my podcast for a while, you know that I enjoy making predictions.   Obviously, predictions are right or wrong, which is part of the fun of these in my opinion.   While I have had several predictions in either music or basketball that were spectacularly right, I also have several that have been horribly wrong (the pair I always reference in music was back around 2012, prior to my podcast or blogs, when I predicted that two of the biggest rock acts in the world would end up being Tame Impala, which I felt good about after they headlined Coachella in 2019, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra…oops).   While I had some predictions this WNBA season that have been correct (most notably that Minnesota would be dominant and could end up chasing ...

This post is a part of WNBA Week+.  During this stretch, I will release several blog posts related to the WNBA, including news stories, player discussions, and teams’ seasons.   At one point during Derek Jeter’s career, I read an article about how he had become both overrated and underrated depending on who was asked.   If you asked Yankees fans, you got answers about how he was one of the best Yankees of all time, was the best shortstop of his era, was consistently great, was robbed for at least one MVP, was a flashy defender, was clutch, was a winner, and, most importantly to many, was The Captain.   That said, if you asked people who weren’t fans of him, you got answers about how he was overrated and wasn’t the best shortstop in the league, but rather was boosted by his status on the Yankees.   Further, a lot of analytics view him as a negative defender (his range in particular was poor and often overlooked by his leaping throws) and often not one of the ...

This post is a part of WNBA Week+.  During this stretch, I will release several blog posts related to the WNBA, including news stories, player discussions, and teams’ seasons.   This year, the NBA had a strange situation where a team who had minimal media attention (the Oklahoma City Thunder) won the championship.   There was little coverage of the team from the national standpoint, which led many to believe this team was not good despite winning 68 games and having an MVP who was a superstar, two All-NBA players, two All-Defensive team players (including the runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year), and four other elite defenders who could have been named (it is worth noting that 3 of them were ineligible due to games played).   All the focus on OKC was that they were not a great team, they were boring, and that MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was a free throw merchant who only scored so many points due to forcing his way to the line, even though they were such a...

This post is a part of WNBA Week+.  During this stretch, I will release several blog posts related to the WNBA, including news stories, player discussions, and teams’ seasons.   Due to timing and how many other things have gone on in basketball, I have not written anywhere near enough about the WNBA.   There have been a lot of good things that have happened this year, including the games themselves, a fun All-Star Weekend (the game was what it was due to injuries, but the events and selections were awesome), an interesting CBA negotiations (as a brief clarification, the issue comes down to the revenue sharing, as the most recent CBA had the players getting 9% of revenue, which is tiny even compared to UFC, which has a reputation for not paying their athletes), and an exciting playoff race, especially starting with the two-seed.   That said, there are also several negative aspects, most notably the injuries, continued sexist rhetoric, and the league’s continued po...

This post is a part of WNBA Week+.  During this stretch, I will release several blog posts related to the WNBA, including news stories, player discussions, and teams’ seasons.   The WNBA Trade Deadline is usually a quiet event for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that the salary cap is a hard cap (unlike that of the NBA), which limits the number of teams that have enough cap space to make a trade.   Historically, very few teams make moves that include players who are in rotations (in fact, last season was an oddity when a player as notable as Marina Mabrey was traded at the deadline).   This year, there were 3 trade deadline moves, each of them are notable and include a player going to each team who will be in the rotation.   I gave my grades for each of these trades, ordered by how notable each trade.   Brittney Sykes Seattle receives :   Brittney Sykes Washington receives :   Alysha Clark, Zia Cooke, 2026 1 st round pick (...